Below Shoghor the streams of Arkari and Lodko join, at Andakhti, two katcha kôs from Shoghor. The Rajah of Chitràl’s son lives there (Bahram); another son, Murid, lived in Lodko district. There is little snowfall on the high Khatinza, but there is plenty on the easy Nuqsán. A third road, over a plain, also leads to Chitrál from Zeibák, namely, to Uskútul (3 kôs from Zeibák); thence to Singlich, 2½ kôs, maidán; thence to the great tank, lake, or Hauz, five miles long and 1½ miles broad, full of big fish. Thence over the Durra, infested by Kafirs, only a katcha kôs, easy ascent, when the snow melts (otherwise impassable), and an easy descent of one kôs to Shai Sidèn, at foot of pass (below which is, 2 kôs, Gobôr, where there is some cultivation in summer). (Birzin is a village of 40 houses, about 8 kôs distant from Gobôr.) Parabêg, 50 houses, 2 kôs; Parabêg to Kui, 70 houses, 1 katcha kôs; below Kui, ½ kôs, is Jítur; below is a ziarat of Pir Shah Nasir Khosrō at Birgunnì, one kôs, a warm spring, 50 houses; Birgunnì to Drôshp, 2 katcha kôs, where Raja Imán-ul-Mulk’s son, Murid, resides. Drôshp, 40 houses; one kôs further is Mogh, 20 houses; thence to Andákhti, 4 or 5 kôs. Over the Hauz is the Mandàl mountain towards the Siah Posh country. Ahmad Diwanè, 50 houses, is the first village of Kafirs, subject to Chitrál. Over Gabôr is the Shuitsh Mountain, behind which is the Aptzai Fort of the Siah Posh Kafirs, 200 houses; these are the two places from which Kafirs descend to plunder caravans coming from Peshawar, and of whose approach they may have been warned from Chitrál, keeping clothes and weapons for themselves, and giving the horses, etc., to Chitrál. The Kafirs of Kamōz (2,000 houses) are subject to Chitrál; also Ludde (1,000 houses), Aptsai (200 houses), Shudgol Fort (150 houses).
Istagàz is subject (100 houses) to Chitrál; Mēr (40 houses) subject to Chitrál; Mundjèsh, 500 houses; Madugàll (500 houses and two forts), on a difficult road, is between Kamōz (1 kôs above it) and Kamtán (Ludde, Aptsai, Shudgol, Ahmad Diwané), 4 kôs. These Madugallis are independent, and plunder caravans from Dīr or Zemindars. Sometimes they are bribed by the Chitrál Raja to keep quiet.
Dull as the above account may read, it is full of topographical, if not political, interest to whoever can read “between the lines”; and the telegrams and articles in The Times of the 23rd and 25th Sept., 1891, throw light on an unpleasant and hitherto concealed situation. Since 1866 I have, in vain, drawn the attention of the Indian Government to the Gilgit frontier. In 1886, or twenty years after my exploration, Colonel Lockhart’s mission, no doubt, did service, as regards Chitrál; but Hunza and Nagyr have been mismanaged, owing to the incompetent manner in which my information has been used. I have recently, after three years’ labour, much expense, and some danger, completed the first quarto volume of my work on Hunza, Nagyr, and a part of Yasin, the language of which has been a great puzzle, that has now been unravelled, giving a new departure to philology; and the Foreign Department of the Indian Government has presented me with 100 copies of my work, a compliment that is often paid to the honorary contributor of a paper to the Asiatic Quarterly Review.
APPENDIX VII.
(a) A SECRET RELIGION IN THE HINDUKUSH [THE PAMIR REGION] AND IN THE LEBANON.
I.—The Muláis of the Hindukush.
A number of conjectures as to the origin of the word “Mulái,” all of which are incorrect, have been made by eminent writers unacquainted with Arabic or the meaning of its theological history and terms. A few of these conjectures, however, go very near some fact or view connected with the “Muláis.” The word may not mean “terrestrial gods,” but there are no other, for practical purposes, in the creed of the “Muláis.” It is certainly not a corruption of “Muláhid” or “heretic,” if not “atheist,” although this term has been specially applied to them by their enemies. It can have nothing whatever to do etymologically with “Muwáhidin” or worshippers of “One” [God], though they, no doubt, call themselves so, i.e., “Unitarians.” There is this additional difficulty, moreover, introduced into the question, that no name can be conclusive as to the esoteric appellation of a sect that has been obliged to practise “Conformity” or “Pious fraud” or “concealment” of its religion, in order to escape persecution or wholesale massacre. The Shiahs,[127] whose belief, in the hereditary succession, through the descendants of A’li, of the spiritual “Imámat” or leadership or apostleship of the prophet Muhammad, rendered them overt or covert enemies of those Sunni rulers who held the temporal power or “the Khiláfat” (misspelt as “the Caliphate”), were, and are, allowed to practise “Taqqîa” (which I have rendered as “Conformity”) outwardly and the more exaggerated or exclusive a particular A’liite or Shiite sect, the more careful had it to be. The Sunni and Shiah may both publicly confess “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet”; but the Shiah adds under his breath, “A’li is the Deputy (Governor) of God and the heir of the prophet of God.” Now this word for “Deputy” is “vali,” “to be close to,” whether it be to God, a king, a priest, a master, or other position of eminence in Arabian belief, society, history, or intellectual creations.[128] “Maulá” or “Mulá” comes from the same root and is generally applied to a spiritual master, but, among the Shiahs, specially to their “Lord” A’li. Therefore, “Muláis” are the special followers of the “Lord A’li,” just as the Jesuits claim to be a fraternity of special followers of “the Lord Jesus.” When, then, the term “Mauláná” or our “Master or Lord” is specially used in the Druse Covenant of Initiation [see further on], there is not far to seek for the meaning of the appellation “Mulái,” though it was left for me to find it out from the A’liite songs of the Muláis of the Hindukush. Whatever the innermost coterie of the “initiated” may practise or believe, a connecting link of the sect with some existing creed is necessary for their safety or respectability. Thus, the Ismailians might call themselves “Sadiqis” or “the righteous,” in order to spread the belief of their being special adherents of the 6th Imám, (in the order of descent from A’li), the Imám Ja’far Sádiq (the righteous), without entering into the vexed question as to whether his son “Ismàîl” was the real “seventh” Imám or his other son, Mûsa (through whom the bulk of Shiahs look for their Mahdi or Messiah, the 12th Imám). Nor would any such special fervour in revering a particular phase or man be necessarily deemed to be heretical, even among Sunnis. I have often heard a Sunni, especially if he was a Persian scholar and the strange magic of that language had subdued him, admit the impeachment of having “a particular love for the house of A’li,” and the numerous class of Sayads, who claim to be descendants of the Prophet, is respected, if not venerated, among Sunnis, who, in theory, oppose the “hereditary” claims of Shiahs.[129] The Máulais, therefore, of the Hindukush, being, consciously or not, a sub-sect of Shiahs, can make friends with the main body of Shiahs, and yet pretend to the Sunnis as being, in many respects, with them. Normally, the Mauláis would profess to be good Muhammadans of the Shiah persuasion, leaning, however, to the 7th Imám; if surrounded by, or in danger of, Sunnis, they would outwardly “conform” (which is all that the Sunnis require), and, at home, practise their own rites. The Khojas of Bombay, who had been converted from Hinduism, but whose very name is Ismailian, used to read the “Das-awtar” or “ten incarnations,” in which “A’li” is made out to be the “Tenth Incarnation,” thus rendering their step from Wishnu Hinduism to Shiah Muhammadanism an easy one. “All things to all men” is the dictum of the Muláis, without, thereby, sacrificing their own convictions. The more a Mulái knows, the more he acts on Disraeli’s sneer that all sensible men are of one religion, but do not tell what that religion is. The less a Mulái knows, the more fanatically is he an A’liite, centreing however his faith on the living descendant of the 7th Imám. “Nothing is a crime that is not found out” may, or may not be, the theory among the Druses, or the practice all over the world; the fact remains that neither the Druses nor the Muláis, whatever their belief, are worse than their neighbours. Even the odious signification that attaches to the term “Assassin” has been a calumny against those misguided Ismailians who sought to rid the world of tyrants who had ordered the general massacre of the sect or who sacrificed one man in order to save a whole people.